Written by Stuart Haden on March 30, 2016

As soon as we mention the word badge it can evoke all sorts of memories and emotions. Early sporting prowess maybe, swimming not sinking. Stitched or pinned, casual or uniform. Many of us collected them, never to be worn. Either too precious, or not within our make up to show off our shiny new friend. But either way they meant something.

Of course the time honoured craft of badge collection is well and truly digital. Metadata that can tell the story, hard coded, open sourced and evidence based. This new online standard to recognise and verify learning is backed by Mozilla. They even supply a backpack (so that you can collect, share and display your awards), so maybe the Scouting principles can survive in the digital age. Tripadvisor, Foursquare and the Khan Academy have all jumped on the badge wagon although their awards are not transferable. This have given rise to open badges, you can even display these in your LinkedIn profile if you want.

Do these badges resonate with you? Many of us operate in an organisational context, could badges be applied to your online learning programmes? Is this the future waiting to happen? Or has it already happened? Honestly I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I am willing to take a look. I am indebted to @corney_sarah for providing me with my next step. Check out this free Open Badges 101 course from the Think Out Loud Club. And guess what you’ll get a badge on completion, once you’ve written 250+ words about open badges anywhere on the web that is?! Shouldn’t be long till my badge is issued then, thanks for reading…

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